Broadcasted video programs become available every day, creating a wealth of information and entertainment. The ability to store video, either locally at a user's site, or remotely on remote servers, leads to a potentially large information and entertainment collection.
Having the ability to search through such large local or remote repositories for specific content is useful, especially to save time. However, the searching and retrieving may be difficult or inefficient and may involve transmitting the video program, or some components of it such as images or text, either for replay at the receiving end or for generating a textual and/or pictorial index of the program. Transmitting the video program requires sufficient bandwidth. In the instance where the specific content is located only in a remote repository, retransmitting the content is inefficient.